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Authorizing Humor: Lucian's Demonax and Cynic Rhetoric

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Authorizing Humor: Lucian's Demonax and Cynic Rhetoric AUTHORIZING HUMOR: LUCIAN'S DEMONAX AND CYNIC RHETORIC R. Bracht Branham Emory University ABSTRACT Lucian's Demonax comprises a collection of humorous anecdotes about an eclectic Cynic philosopher and contains very little continuous narrative This paper argues that the text reflects the deliberate choice of a rhetorical style cultivated above all by the Cynics, which systematically exploits the comic resources of surprise and incongruity and takes as its characteristic vehicle the chreia or pointed anecdote Wit has an enthymematic character it requires the audience to perform an act of mental collaboration that can be variously described as bridging a logical gap, moving between alien codes, frames of reference, or universes of discourse, or, in Koestler's classic formulation, "bisociatmg" divergent matrices of meaning Demonax uses wit Lucianically to provoke his interlocutors to consider themselves and their situations from unexpected and often incongruous perspectives Men practice rhetoric with speeches They practice philosophy by being silent, by being playful, and, yes by Zeus, by being the butt of jokes and the jester Plutarch, Symposiaka Lucian's Demonax may well strike a modern reader as an oddity. Its title, ΔΗΜΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ ΒΙΟΣ or The Life of Demonax, leads us to expect a biographical account and yet it contains almost no continuous narrative. Instead, after a brief introduction, the work consists of a collection of short, jocular anecdotes about an Athenian philosopher whom Lucían claims to have known personally. It is in fact the primary source for Demonax's life (Jones: 91-92). But no attempt is made to join one story to the next, nor is the sage ever shown, like Socrates in Plato or Xenophon, discoursing philosophically on the immortality of the soul or tying hapless interlocutors in logical knots. The argument of this paper is that the Demonax's formal oddity, unlike all Lucian's other works, reflects the deliberate choice of a rhetorical style cultivated above all by the Cynics, which systematically exploits the comic resources of surprise and incon­ gruity and takes as its characteristic vehicle the chreia, or pointed anecdote. I wish first to highlight some of the salient features of Cynic -33" 34 SEMEIA rhetoric as they bear on the Demonax and Dio Chrysostom's Diogenes (Or.8) and then to explore how and why these authors chose to avail themselves of this particular tradition. Seen in this light both works emerge as interesting examples of the literary adaptation of a popular rhetorical procedure and as a point of intersection between oral and written performance. That the comic chreia was the hallmark of the Cynic style can be confirmed by surveying the anecdotes preserved about the sect's founder, Diogenes of Sinope, in Diogenes Laertius. Almost everything we know of him is expressed in the form of anecdotes. This in itself is not distinctive since chreiai are told of philosophers and wise men generally. But it has long been recognized, even by casual readers, that the stories told about Diogenes are simply funnier than those Diogenes Laertius reports about other philosophers. D. R. Dudley takes this as an indication that the stories about him may well be true, but the opposite inference is equally possible (Dudley: 29 n. 2; for the best account of the chreia traditions about philosophers see Kindstrand: 217 ff.). The humor of the Cynic traditions about Diogenes reflect the polish of a self-consciously rhetorical practice which made optimal use of the argumentative resources of the short but memorable anecdote. Indeed, Cynic rhetoric drew praise on formal grounds from as discerning a critic as Demetrius, who notes in particular the importance of humor for the Cynic style (κυνικός τρόπος)1. If we ask why the comic anecdote would have been so assiduously cultivated by Diogenes' followers, several reasons seem obvious: Cynicism was from its inception a popular philosophy opposed to the learned theoretical teach­ ings of Plato, and, later, of Zeno and Epicurus. What form would be better 1 Demetrius shows himself keenly aware of the rhetoric of humor. While dis­ cussing the graces (χάριτες) of the elegant (γλαφυρός) style, he observes that the most potent grace (η ουνατωτάτη χάρις) is created by introducing humor into an otherwise noncomic context; he cites as an example a jest of Xenophon made at the expense of a dour Persian (Demetrius 134-5) Demetrius admires this technique precisely because the writer produces an effect ostensibly at odds with his material He touches on the κυνικός τρόπος explicitly in two passages In the first (Demetrius 170), he notes the affinity between the pointed humor of Crates' encomium of the lentil and that of anecdotes and maxims generally (χρεία, γνώμη) Later (Demetrius 259-61) in discussing the stylistic sources of forcefulness (οεινότης), Demetrius observes that it is created in comedy and Cynic literature by the element of playfulness (¿κ παιοιας), he cites as examples a line of Crates' "Cynic epic" and a chreia about Diogenes at the Olympics "At the conclusion of the hoplite race Diogenes ran up and proclaimed himself victor over all mankind—in nobility of character (καλοκαγαθία) " Demetrius observes that the chreia creates laughter (yeAdrou) and astonishment (θαυμάζεται), and has a gentle bite (ύποοάκνει) He then quotes another chreia about Diogenes and observes that its wit is covertly pointed and significant (ή κευθομενη εμφασις) This complexity of effect, he says, is why the whole genre (ειοος) of Cynic discourse (λόγος) is like a dog that wags its tail and bites at the same time Cf Lucían, Bis Accusatus 33. (All references to Lucian's text are to M D. Macleod's OCT editions ) BRANHAM AUTHORIZING HUMOR 35 suited to propagate such a philosophy than anecdotes that were short enough to be easily remembered and made memorable and significant by their calculated use of comic incongruity and surprise7 The perspectives enabled by humor dovetail with central Cynic themes in ways that are hardly incidental It is this which makes "Cynic rhetoric" a recognizable generic category, distinguished by its serious use of humor as a heuristic device From this practice of "serious jesting" evolved a set of tech­ niques—unexpectedness, emphasis, implicitness (the techniques of wit as analyzed by Koestler 82-86)—by which humor was made a means of perception This mode of writing is sometimes associated with the σπουδογέλοιος, or seriocomic performer, a term applied explicitly by Strabo to the Cynic Memppus (16 2 24 Kramer's ed ) When I speak of Cynic rhetoric, therefore, I refer to a style of perfor­ mance preserved in the chreiai about Cynics like Diogenes or Crates and elaborated formally by such writers as Dio Chrysostom and Lucían Like any chreia, the Cynic anecdote may make its point through significant acts as well as words The informing assumptions of Cynic rhetoric also form the theme of many Cynic chreiai παρρησία, "freedom of speech," and avaihtia, "freedom from shame in action," or simply "shamelessness " It was this freedom from shame or social constraint (νόμος) in speech and action that set the Cynic preacher apart from his fellows as one who had the gumption to tell embarrassing truths and was willing to risk social ostracism rather than conform to rules which he taught were nothing more than conventional prejudice (νόμος = δόξα) It was probably this antmomian tendency at the heart of Cynicism that led to the cultivation of the rhetorical possibilities of humor as a way of making the Cynic perspective accessible and persuasive to a larger audience 2 The defining qualities of the Cynic style are epitomized in the figure of Diogenes as preserved by tradition a self-dramatizing iconoclast who would teach anyone who would listen, by paradox, hyperbole and subversive wit In Theon's terms, most of the chreiai about him are oral (λογικαί) and voluntary (αποφαντικαί), placing him in a context to which his remark is a response Though he is not infrequently answering a question, he is shown more typically reacting spontaneously to something he has seen or heard (By contrast, almost all the stories about Demonax present him responding to a specific question The questioner himself is often identified ) If we attempt to classify the form of the sayings themselves according to rhetorical categories, we could find examples of 2 The rise of Cynicism was accompanied by the development of new forms of satiric and parodie literature Unfortunately, these are poorly documented See, how­ ever, A A Long 636-9, and Martin Drury 851-4, cf Branham chap 1 For the Menippean tradition, see Relihan 36 SEMEIA most of the standard types used by Theon (e.g., syllogistic, symbolic, witty, wishful, etc.), but that will tell us little, given the size of the collection. Theon himself cites and classifies the following chreia: On seeing a youth, who was the son of an adulterer, in the act of throwing stones, Diogenes the Cynic said: "Stop boy, you may unwittingly hit your father" (Butts: 3.135-38; see also Hock and O'Neil: 92). Theon calls Diogenes' remark an example of a mixed type, both symbolic and witty. But it is what makes a remark witty and how that wit functions thematically that makes Diogenes' chreiai rhetorically interesting. In this case the wit resides in using the apparently unrelated fact of the boy's birth to reproach his stone throwing. Usually the implications of Diogenes' witticisms are more specifically philosophical. This example is representative, however, in that it is the incongruous nature of Diogenes' connections that produces the recurring and self-consciously comic character of his chreiai. All true wit has an enthymematic character: it requires the audience to perform an act of mental collaboration that can be variously described as bridging a logical gap; moving between alien codes, frames of reference, or universes of discourse; or, in Koestler's classic formulation, bisociating divergent matrices of meaning (the themes of Koestler: chaps.
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